Hello, I'm João Ariedi, engineering leader and builder of AI agent harnesses, working remotely from Brazil.
I lead engineering at scale
I build AI agent harnesses
I research AI and competence
About
I lead engineering where scale, security and AI meet: turning business intent into systems that hold under load, and building the teams behind them.
16 years in technology, 9+ leading engineering teams, the last decade spanning organizational intelligence and cyber defense. Today I lead engineering for a US cybersecurity company, advise technology companies as a partner and fractional CTO, and teach in MBA programs.
How I see the shift: AI moves the bottleneck from execution to judgment. Engineering is no longer building the product directly, but building the machine that builds it: the harness and orchestration that develop, improve and maintain the product 24/7. As in Turing's morphogenesis, AI is the activator and the engineer the inhibitor; the value lives in the tension.
Technologist in Cyber Defense (FIAP) with five professional qualifications. Security by design: mTLS, certificate-based device authentication, post-quantum readiness.
- Experience: 16 years in technology, 9+ leading engineering teams
- E-mail: joaoariedi@gmail.com
- Location: Remote from Brazil · PT/EN
Services
Engineering leadership
Teams at scale, 90%+ retention, engineers grown into leaders on a test-first culture. Security by design in every architectural decision.
Advisory and board work
Partner and advisor to Brazilian technology companies on strategy, architecture governance and AI adoption. Co-founder and former COO of an edtech.
Consulting and fractional CTO
Architecture governance, engineering org design, AI harnesses for legacy modernization, productivity metrics, infrastructure cost efficiency.
Teaching and research
MBA guest professor. Research on AI agents and engineering competence; paper accepted at MEISTUDIES 2026.
Leadership, advisory and teaching
2021 - Present
Batuta
San Francisco, cybersecurity (Remote)
San Francisco, cybersecurity (Remote)
Software Engineering Manager (2026 - Present)
Leads the team behind Batuta's next-generation endpoint management platform, a distributed system that securely manages 1M+ devices per enterprise customer. Led the ground-up redesign of the endpoint agent platform, replacing a monolithic legacy system with an event-driven microservices architecture in Go on AWS; security-first design with certificate-based device authentication (mTLS), short-lived tokens and post-quantum readiness. Owns engineering operations end to end on an Extreme Programming, test-first discipline; 90%+ team retention by growing engineers into leaders.
Principal Software Engineer (2021 - 2025)
Technical architecture of the EDR solution (Go, Python/FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes on AWS); high-throughput asynchronous backends; CI/CD with Terraform, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, ArgoCD and Helm; diagnosis of critical production incidents; architecture standards; Vectra security appliances deployed across enterprise datacenters.
Leads the team behind Batuta's next-generation endpoint management platform, a distributed system that securely manages 1M+ devices per enterprise customer. Led the ground-up redesign of the endpoint agent platform, replacing a monolithic legacy system with an event-driven microservices architecture in Go on AWS; security-first design with certificate-based device authentication (mTLS), short-lived tokens and post-quantum readiness. Owns engineering operations end to end on an Extreme Programming, test-first discipline; 90%+ team retention by growing engineers into leaders.
Principal Software Engineer (2021 - 2025)
Technical architecture of the EDR solution (Go, Python/FastAPI, React, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis, Kubernetes on AWS); high-throughput asynchronous backends; CI/CD with Terraform, GitHub Actions, Kubernetes, ArgoCD and Helm; diagnosis of critical production incidents; architecture standards; Vectra security appliances deployed across enterprise datacenters.
2026 - Present
Advisory and consulting
Brazil
Brazil
Software Engineering Advisor at Lecom and Ikatec (since Feb 2026): engineering modernization, AI harnesses to refactor legacy codebases, an Agile adaptation to the AI moment, engineering productivity metrics, architectural validation and cloud cost efficiency. Fractional CTO at IEV (since Jun 2026): AI engineering harnesses, architecture governance, engineering org design and hiring. Consultant to AltynLabs, an AI-first lab; partner and advisor to Brazilian technology companies.
2023 - Present
xCube
Board member and technology advisor
Board member and technology advisor
xCube is a proprietary quantitative research and execution firm that selects algorithmic trading strategies by real broker execution rather than backtests. On the board since May 2023: the technology roadmap from a proprietary desk to a go-to-market company, the capabilities that build investor trust (reproducible and auditable scoring, data protection, observability, access controls), architecture and stack review, and the first engineering hires.
2024 - Present
Frons Educação
Professor, MBA and undergraduate technology programs
Professor, MBA and undergraduate technology programs
MBA in Strategic Management, Operational Excellence and Agile Methods: Data Analysis and AI for Strategic Decisions, each student applying it to a case from their own job. Undergraduate technology degree: Computer Architecture and Operating Systems; MLOps, Edge and Model Deployment. 50+ students per class. Mentored data science and engineering teams at Kodus (2021 - 2023).
Engineering, intelligence and founding
2021 - 2024
flugel.it
Principal Software Engineer · Senior Software Engineer
Principal Software Engineer · Senior Software Engineer
Led the full rebuild of Cloudways (DigitalOcean), which runs 2M+ WordPress and WooCommerce installations, migrated with zero downtime; service-oriented Python backend (Django, FastAPI, PostgreSQL) on Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub); microservices for WordPress orchestration on Kubernetes. Hired and retained the team (90%+ retention) and mentored 3+ engineers into leadership roles.
2018 - 2024
Scaffold Education
Intelligence Manager · Senior Market Intelligence Analyst · IT consultant
Intelligence Manager · Senior Market Intelligence Analyst · IT consultant
Built and led the data intelligence team from zero: end-to-end collection and integration pipelines across the transactional systems, business and market intelligence, performance management with OKRs, KPIs and KRIs, weekly competitive-intelligence reporting to leadership; later advisory in BI and data engineering. Organizational intelligence: turning information into decision.
2016 - 2018
AEON Fablab, Bauru
Co-founder
Co-founder
Digital fabrication lab founded by ten people from programming, physics, design, carpentry and biology; Fab Charter member. BruHack 2017 workshop. The experience that became the research question.
2016
São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)
Technology and Innovation Researcher
Technology and Innovation Researcher
Led a FAPESP-funded (PIPE) innovation research project: a distributed network of environmental data-collection probes deployed in 10+ hard-to-reach locations, built with rapid prototyping (3D printing) and embedded systems (Arduino, sensors), delivered as a production-ready IoT solution and documented with university researchers.
2013 - 2017
Eletrize
Co-founder and COO
Co-founder and COO
Co-founded an edtech serving 5,000+ students: an adaptive learning platform on item response theory, with gamification, for college-entrance preparation; statistical models powering the adaptive engine; learning-object migration delivered to Pearson Brasil on time and under budget. Led strategy, product roadmap and operations from inception to growth stage.
Education
2024 - 2025
Technologist in Cyber Defense (Tecnólogo em Defesa Cibernética)
FIAP
FIAP
2,000 h, MEC-recognised, concluded.
2026 -
PPGMIT, Media and Technology
São Paulo State University, UNESP Bauru
São Paulo State University, UNESP Bauru
Master's application, in selection.
2018 - 2022
Production Engineering
São Paulo State University, UNESP
São Paulo State University, UNESP
Coursework. Organizational intelligence, business strategy, competitive intelligence and knowledge management.
2010 - 2014
Physics teaching degree
São Paulo State University, UNESP
São Paulo State University, UNESP
Coursework. Left the course to co-found my first learning technology startup.
Certifications and languages
2024 - 2025
FIAP professional qualifications
Certified Cybersecurity Professional, Information Security Officer, Certified Information Security Manager, Penetration Testing, Certified Forensics Professional.
2023
AWS Partner accreditations
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services
Technical, Cloud Economics Essentials, Sales.
PT · EN · ES
Languages
Portuguese (native) · English (bilingual at work) · Spanish (reading)
Research and publications
2026 · article
Democratizando a fabricação digital em Fab Labs: efeitos cognitivos das interfaces agênticas no projeto
with Dorival Campos Rossi (UNESP) · 9th International Congress Media Ecology and Image Studies (MEISTUDIES)
with Dorival Campos Rossi (UNESP) · 9th International Congress Media Ecology and Image Studies (MEISTUDIES)
Accepted Aug 2026, full text submitted Oct 2026, presented Nov 2026. Argues the syntagm transition: agentic interfaces absorb whole links of the design chain. Abstract and extended summary.
2026 · paper
A cultura organizacional na transformação de organizações tradicionais em organizações AI first
second author of four · XXXIII SIMPEP, Bauru, Nov 2026
second author of four · XXXIII SIMPEP, Bauru, Nov 2026
A case study of a corporate artificial intelligence laboratory. Abstract and extended summary.
2026 - · master's pre-research
An agentic interface for a university Fab Lab
PPGMIT, UNESP Bauru
PPGMIT, UNESP Bauru
An LLM-based agentic interface for a university Fab Lab's laser cutter, measuring access, artifact quality, knowledge retention and which competence profiles become productive.
Work
Hefesto, a development harness for Claude Code
Spec-driven workflow, specialist agents and quality gates enforced by hooks rather than good intentions: the agent cannot skip tests, weaken assertions or commit secrets, because a hook exits non-zero. 27 commands, 7 agents, 16 hooks. Open source, MIT, v9.1.3.
Repository · Harness Software Engineering, the presentation
Repository · Harness Software Engineering, the presentation
Safesphere
Digital-security service for families, bringing the discipline of enterprise cyber defense to the household: devices, accounts and the people who use them. Advisor and builder.
safesphere.com.br
safesphere.com.br
xCube
Proprietary quantitative research and execution firm: algorithmic trading strategies selected by real broker execution rather than backtests. Board member and technology advisor since 2023.
xcube.finance
xcube.finance
Presentations
Modern Engineering, the deck on how engineering teams work now that AI writes much of the code: embedded viewer, fullscreen and PDF download.
View presentations
View presentations
Skills
Engineering
Go, Python (Django, FastAPI), JavaScript/Node, React · PostgreSQL, Redis · Kafka, RabbitMQ · Kubernetes, AWS, Google Cloud, Terraform · event-driven and service-oriented architecture, CI/CD, test-first.
Security
EDR architecture, mTLS and PKI, certificate-based device authentication, post-quantum readiness, penetration testing, forensics.
AI engineering
Claude Code harness design, spec-driven development, multi-agent orchestration, hook-enforced quality gates, agent evaluation.
Intelligence
Business and market intelligence, data pipelines, BI, knowledge management, OKRs.
Fabrication
Laser cutting, 3D printing, Fab Lab operation.
Interests
Home Lab
Running 2 Proxmox nodes that host most of my daily apps. Continuous hands-on learning with infrastructure.
Digital fabrication
Laser cutting and 3D printing. Co-founded a Fab Lab; now researching how agentic interfaces change who gets to make things.
Games
Real-time strategy enthusiast. Problem-solving mindset extends to gaming and creative challenges.
Music
Classical guitar student. Creative outlet that complements analytical work.
Motivation
AI moves the bottleneck of engineering from execution to judgment. Engineering is no longer building the product directly, but building the machine that builds, improves and maintains it.